[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 81 (Wednesday, June 5, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5928-H5931]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REPUBLICANS VIEW ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Georgia 
[Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 30 minutes as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we wanted to talk tonight in response to 
some of the things that have been going on in Washington. I have with 
me the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] and the gentleman from 
Arizona [Mr. Hayworth].
  I think our first topic that we will go ahead and talk about is this 
Wisconsin waiver, which basically is saying it gives the State of 
Wisconsin the right to make their own laws on governing and reforming 
welfare. President Clinton went out there 2 weeks ago and said, ``I 
support the waiver for you, I like what you're doing, it's great,'' and 
when the cameras were on, he was 100 percent for it. Then when the 
cameras turned off, he backed off.
  But the second thing that happened is the Republican Party said, 
``Great, a bipartisan chance to work on welfare reform. We welcome 
it.'' Here is a President who said he wanted to end welfare as we know 
it, not extend welfare as he has been doing, so let us give him the 
Wisconsin waiver.
  It has been debated, as I understand it from the gentleman from 
Wisconsin [Mr. Klug], 18 months in the Wisconsin Legislature. The 
gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] was in the State legislature. 
What is your comment on this?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I was in a border 
State in Minnesota. We have been debating welfare reform for a long 
time. I think you have characterized it absolutely correctly, that this 
bill that passed the Wisconsin Legislature, it is a giant step forward 
in terms of encouraging more work and personal responsibility.
  The President went to Wisconsin, said that he supported what was 
happening in Wisconsin, would grant them the waiver, and then somewhere 
between getting on the plane in Madison to fly back to Washington, 
something happened and all of a sudden some of the bureaucrats here in 
Washington apparently got to the President and said well, maybe we 
cannot support all of those waivers, and all we are trying to do is 
actually help the President to keep one more campaign promise. I am 
really surprised at the characterization we heard here just a few 
moments ago.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I would join my colleague from Minnesota, and I thank 
my friend from Georgia for yielding. Yes, I would have to take issue 
with the statements of our friend from Wisconsin, playing off some of 
the philosophical biases of some of the self-appointed potentates and 
pundits around the Beltway as if issues are there to be stolen or 
plagiarized.
  That is not the issue in this case. What is the issue is something 
that is seemingly oft repeated in this dynmaic which exists between the 
legislative branch of government and the executive branch, and that is, 
unfortunately, and I say this not with any glee nor with venom or 
vitriol, there simply is an inconsistency between the President's words 
and the President's deeds.
  And so again what we are doing in the new majority, with sincere 
folks from the other side of the aisle, is to step beyond partisanship 
and give the President the vote of confidence, I think we could almost 
say, to move forward with the very waivers he so willingly embraced. My 
friend from Georgia recalls that twice now we have passed welfare 
reform, mindful of the President's words to end welfare as we know 
it. We have done it twice and twice we have seen that legislation 
vetoed.

  Mr. KINGSTON. I want to make the point that the liberal media has 
given President Clinton a free ride on just about any issue. What the 
Congress is saying, ``We're giving you a chance, Mr. President, if 
you're going to talk the talk, walk the walk.''
  You mentioned that we have passed welfare twice and it has been 
vetoed by this President twice. In fact, the last bill passed the U.S. 
Senate by a vote of 87 to 12. That is a very strong bipartisan 
statement, particularly from the Senate which is not exactly letting a 
lot of legislation go.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I would just add to that, the discussion we have had 
today and we have heard tonight on special orders is really again sort 
of back to this fundamental debate between those who believe that in 
the final analysis Washington knows best and those of us who would like 
to see, whether we are talking about Medicare reform or welfare reform, 
to decentralize this thing and allow States and individuals to

[[Page H5929]]

make many of the choices themselves. It is really, and you hate to get 
back to this debate about Boris Yeltsin and some of the comments the 
gentleman made about the former Soviet Union, how we are encouraging 
them to move to a more market oriented system.
  Yet here in Washington it is easy to be in favor of welfare reform 
and Medicare reform when you are out on a campaign swing, but somehow 
when you get back to Washington, the influence of this city just says 
no, we must keep the decisionmaking, we must keep the power here in 
Washington.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. And even despite the considerable influence and 
pervasive atmosphere of this city, which seems to have a fundamental 
disconnection with the rest of the country, there is another disturbing 
development. Again our friend from Wisconsin who preceded us asked, 
almost plaintively, ``Why can't Republicans and Democrats get along?''
  I would contend that on many issues there are many folks on the 
Democratic side who want to find solutions. What is troubling is that 
there are many in this Chamber who, even in the act of despairing and 
disparaging partisanship, turn right around and engage in the same type 
of partisanship.
  You mentioned earlier, and the example was especially unfortunate and 
egregious, our good friend and colleague from Connecticut stood up 
again, mischaracterizing and misquoting one of the prominent Members of 
this institution with reference to Medicare, attributing a quote to 
that individual, saying this individual said that Medicare would wither 
on the vine. And indeed the record reflects that the speaker in 
question was talking about the Health Care Financing Administration, 
not the Medicare Program. I would simply repeat the quote:

       You know, we tell Boris Yeltsin, get rid of centralized 
     command bureaucracies, go to the marketplace. What do you 
     think the Health Care Financing Administration is? It is a 
     centralized command bureaucracy. It is everything we are 
     telling Boris Yeltsin to get rid of.
       No, we do not get rid of it in round one because we do not 
     think it is politically smart. We do not think that is the 
     right way to go through a transition. But we believe it--the 
     Health Care Financing Administration--let me add that 
     emphasis--we believe it is going to wither on the vine 
     because we think seniors are going to leave it, are going to 
     leave it voluntarily.
  It is most disturbing. And as much as we want to move forward in a 
bipartisan fashion, when there are those who repeatedly come to this 
floor and either through misinformation or deliberate disinformation 
choose to mischaracterize and unfairly characterize the facts in this 
debate, then it is our duty to point out the inaccuracies of those 
statements, not for playground taunts or to score debating points as if 
this were some super sophisticated debating society, no, not at all. 
Because we are cognizant of the fact that this is the Chamber in which 
our constitutional Republic must talk out issues and must find 
solutions.

  Mr. KINGSTON. I am glad the gentleman mentioned that we do have a 
very difficult time here approaching issues and the resolution of those 
issues on a rational basis because of the rhetoric.
  Here on this chart is a quote by the Democrat leader, Dick Gephardt. 
This was on CNN September 30, 1995, last year. ``it is a big lie to say 
that Medicare is in trouble.''
  This is not an ordinary rank-and-file Democrat here speaking. Okay, 
everybody may say something one time. But here again, ``Meet The 
Press,'' July 30, questioned by a reporter.
  ``Isn't it true that we cannot allow Medicare to grow at 10 percent a 
year?''
  Congressman Gephardt says, ``Now the Republicans are saying because 
the report says the fund will have insolvency problems in the year 2002 
there's a great urgency. This is a hoax.''
  This is the health care program that my mother is on, not just my 
mother but all of her friends and my parents' friends who raised me and 
helped me in my formative years. The Democrat leader says that it is 
not going broke.
  Here is the report which came out today. Last year this yellow line 
says that Medicare would be going bankrupt in the year 2002. This was 
the report of April 3, 1995. Well, that yellow line going bankrupt in 
2002, that is what Congressman Gephardt was saying, ``That's a lie.''
  Well, he turned out to be right. It was wrong. It actually is going 
to go bankrupt, according to the new report, which just came out today, 
about 2 years earlier than that, and there is a steady decline in 
dollars already. Medicare is losing money. The very program that our 
mother's health care depends on and you do not want to fact up to how 
we are going to protect and preserve it? This is extremely important. 
It is a high priority for me. It is beyond partisan politics. These are 
the people who helped raise all of us. We owe them a debt. We have got 
to crack down on the fraud and the abuse and the waste. We have got to 
give them a choice of health care plans, a choice of physicians, the 
same choices that you and I have when we go out into the health care 
and insurance market. Let Mom and Dad have those choices.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I just want to reiterate a couple of things that Mr. 
Kingston has just said. First of all, seniors especially but indeed all 
Americans have a right to the facts. Frankly I think that there have 
been too many of these distortions and half-truths and mistruths and 
outright lies. Frankly the quotes that you have used tonight from the 
minority leader, I do not think they were taken out of context at all. 
I think for a number of months I think it was a calculated position by 
one side in this debate to basically say there is no problem and that 
the Republicans have made this up and they are trying to cut Medicare 
so that they can give this tax cut to the rich, which is bogus, anyway, 
but the point is this is serious, it is real, and the program is going 
bankrupt at an even faster rate than we were told last year.
  But the other point that was made, and it needs to be restated, this 
is not the time and this is not the issue for partisanship. This is an 
issue that deserves real statesmanship. But the first thing we have to 
do is face up to the facts. We have to get the facts. The American 
people and seniors have a right to the facts.

  The other point that Mr. Kingston made, and I think this is even more 
important, I think we have got to address this, and I personally do not 
address this as a Republican or even a Member of Congress. First of all 
I address it as the son of two parents who are both on Medicare, who 
both depend on the Medicare system, and hopefully will well into the 
future for their health care.
  A fellow came up to me at a meeting a couple of weeks ago and he said 
something so beautifully and so simply. He said,

       With the issue of Medicare and so many of the other issues 
     that you're debating out in Washington, it's not a debate 
     between the Republicans and the Democrats. In fact, it's not 
     so much a debate between the right and the left. It's a 
     debate between right and wrong.

       It is wrong to conceal the facts from the senior citizens 
     when we know the facts. The fund is going bankrupt. Let me 
     just finally say that it is also wrong to tolerate a system 
     that is rife with abuse and waste and fraud. I do not care 
     which study you use. When I have my town meetings, I have had 
     people come up at my town meetings and talk about being 
     billed $321 for a toothbrush. I mean, there is so much waste, 
     fraud and abuse. The GAO, I think, said it was $23 billion. 
     Somebody else said it was $30 billion. We do not know what 
     the exact number is, but we know that the system we have 
     today, with the centralized control bureaucracy, is wrong.

  Let me also say that the system we have, it is wrong for us to 
tolerate a system that is so complicated that my parents, and indeed I 
do not think most seniors can understand their bills. I mean, that is 
just wrong. They ought to at least know what they are being billed for.
  My father had surgery a few months ago and he got a stack of bills 
this deep. I could not understand them. So I am sure he could not 
understand them and I doubt if many people can understand them. We need 
a simpler system that is built on market forces, that gives people real 
choices and allows the market to help control those costs. Everybody 
who has looked at this, every independent objective observer who 
understands the health care delivery system says that our plan will 
work and it will give people those choices.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I wanted to make a point about this fraud and abuse. 
Right now Medicare does not pay people like your father with that stack 
of bills, if he finds out that three or four of them are erroneous, he 
does not get any kind of reward for that at all. In fact many

[[Page H5930]]

times when you say don't pay a bill to Medicare, you have to really be 
proactive or they resist you.
  But here is an example. This is a kind of a dressing, and I am not 
sure, a salesperson gave this to me, and said that the cost, the actual 
manufacturing cost, is like 9 cents and it sells under Medicare for 
about $28.

                              {time}  2345

  It is a total abuse of the system. And I just want to say that under 
our reform plan, seniors who are getting billed for this kind of thing 
right and left would have the opportunity to crack down on it. Let me 
yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my colleague from Georgia. Even as we lament 
the inaccuracies and what some, including those of us here on the floor 
would believe are downright distortions coming from some folks who do 
not appear really committed to finding a solution to this, in the 
spirit of true bipartisanship, in the spirit of finding a constructive 
path to solve this problem, let us state what has happened that has 
been constructive.
  First of all, the President today called on us to find a bipartisan 
solution. I know we would say to the President, Mr. Speaker, we would 
say welcome to this. Now let us own up to the problem and let us move 
to solve it. Let us also note for the record that many Members of this 
Chamber on both sides of the aisle lament the waste, fraud and abuse 
the system has wrought. So we understand that fact.
  Now again, not in the spirit of one-upmanship or political advantage 
but in the spirit of truly trying to solve this problem and save this 
program for our seniors, I believe we need to point out some honest 
differences of opinion on this issue. No. 1, gone are the days and 
indeed we see with the release of this trustees' report that the crisis 
has grown more acute, that now we are looking at the fund going broke 
in 5 years, but quite possible in 4.
  Now again, our colleague from Connecticut stood in the Chamber and 
said that the new majority was rejecting out of hand a commission. 
Well, again, a closer check of history would indicate that that was 
part and parcel of our solution program a year and a half ago. But 
moreover, again those of us who are new to this town, I think, come in 
perhaps without the experience of the so-called insiders but with clear 
enough vision to understand that in Washingtonese, when you are dealing 
with a program that is sensitive politically, one tactic that is quite 
often used to pacify the citizenry until the next election is a blue 
ribbon independent panel.
  Mr. Speaker, again, I say this not in the spirit of criticism but in 
the spirit of solving this problem. The problem is far too acute to 
delay again or to put off or to somehow postpone until we get through 
the next election. What we are talking about is health care for our 
senior generations. My folks go on it next year. My 92-year-old 
grandfather has prospered from his health care and is living an 
outstanding life now, as indeed many senior citizens are.
  The very thing we need to do is to move to save this program, and I 
dare say at the end of another year and a half or another 2 years, 
after we go through the pomp and circumstance of a commission, we will 
be no closer to a solution when right now we have the blueprint which 
exists to make the change. We passed it last year, last October, the 
Medicare Preservation Act.
  Now, again, Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I would 
call on the President to join with us. The one thing we cannot afford 
is any type of convenient Washington way out or gimmick that would 
again seem to pacify or mollify seniors and try to take care of this 
program. We do not need to play a shell game with $55 billion moving 
from the Medicare trust fund to the general fund or vice versa or any 
type of legislative sleight of hand to try and satisfy this problem.

  We need to be up front. Many of us in this Chamber had the courage to 
confront this a year and a half ago. We do not do that to ask for the 
gold star of good partisanship. We simply recognized that fact and the 
Medicare Preservation Act is a framework which offers choice, which 
offers quite candidly what many seniors are comfortable with and that 
is Medicare status quo which cleans up the waste, fraud, and abuse, 
which introduces the concept of choice and which moreover actually adds 
money to the beneficiaries every year, from $4,800 this year to well 
over $7,000 a few short years from now, and actually increases at what 
is basically twice the current inflation rate.
  It is a prudent policy to follow to save this program. It is vital we 
do so. So it is in that spirit of bipartisanship that we call on the 
leadership of the minority side, that we call on the President of the 
United States, that we call on the Members of the other body to move 
forward to solve this problem. As today's report indicates, this is far 
too important to put off because of political considerations.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield, I wanted with the few 
minutes left to talk about another serious problem that we are facing 
in America today, mostly with our young people, not completely, and I 
am talking about drugs.
  Now, I believe the two of you are familiar with the Clinton appointed 
judge Harold Baer, the Federal judge. That case, as you know, involved 
a woman who was in a high-crime area, pulled up to an area, I think at 
4 in the morning. Four men stepped out of the shadows. She opened her 
trunk. They put into the back of her car in the trunk two duffle bags. 
The police moved in on this suspicious behavior. All five of them ran. 
The police apprehended all of them and found out later that the duffle 
bags were filled with cocaine, and this Clinton judge said that the 
cocaine could not be used as evidence because to run from the police 
was rational behavior in that neighborhood because the police were 
known as oppressive. That is the kind of people that we are getting to 
fight the war on crimes by the current administration.
  Now, that is in the face of the fact that the average age for 
marijuana usage in America right now is 13. Marijuana usage for 12- to 
14-year-old kids is skyrocketing. This is a headline from the Charlotte 
newspaper today as I was going through the airport: Teen girls use 
drugs like boys. It talks about a new study showing that young American 
women are closing the gender gap in drug use, and today's daughters are 
15 times more likely than their baby boomer mothers to have begun 
illegal drugs by the age of 15.
  Now, can you imagine, we have got these kinds of things going on in 
America today, and then we have judges like this appointed to the bench 
to defend us and keep our streets safe?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield, I think the issue of 
crime and drugs, it is interesting, it is not just the big cities 
anymore. You can go out to the small towns. I remember the newspaper 
editor in one of my small towns last year. You have to be from a small 
town to relate to this. He said: You know, even here in Hayfield, 
Minnesota people are starting to lock their doors.
  I mean, this is a big issue. People no longer feel safe in small 
towns. Rochester, Minnesota, which is a beautiful city and we are all 
very proud of it, but even in Rochester we have had several murders 
just in the last week and a half. So whether they are drug related, 
some are, some are not, but the whole notion of appointing judges who 
do not believe that people are responsible for their own behavior, that 
is a very, very scary notion.

  I think the American people are saying very loudly and very clearly 
that we want a criminal justice system and we want judges appointed who 
understand that people who would prey upon other people need to be held 
accountable, and the innocent people need to be protected from those 
who would prey upon them.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I think our colleague from Minnesota makes excellent 
points, points worth echoing, because I can attest in the Sixth 
District of Arizona, a district in square mileage which is a little 
larger than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, with vast rural areas, 
with not a great population density in those 46,000 square miles, we 
are finding similar problems in the rural areas in the less densely 
populated areas.
  We are finding indeed, and it troubles me to even say it in this 
fashion, but you know how many reputable businesses are built on 
franchise. I dare say that gangs, part and parcel of our drug problem, 
seem to be replicating or franchising far faster than any reputable 
business organization. Now it is

[[Page H5931]]

coming into rural, sparsely populated Arizona.
  We have many of the same problems and, indeed, both of my colleagues, 
Mr. Speaker, have addressed this point. We have to ask this question as 
well: One of the undergirding concepts of western law and, indeed, 
whether it is British or American case law, is the notion of what is 
reasonable.
  That is, put in a particular situation, what would a reasonable 
person do? As our colleague from Georgia points out, it is especially 
troubling that a judge would move or would opine from the bench that 
fleeing the police in a certain neighborhood should ever be considered 
reasonable behavior.

                              {time}  2355

  It is especially troubling, and indeed causes great concern, as we 
look to our third branch of government in our separate but coequal 
branches, as we try to address the problem of crime and the rise of 
drug use among young people, we must move not for what is radical, 
despite the playground taunts and the labels that we hear from so many 
within here on the banks of the Potomac, but what is reasonable. That 
must define what we do.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield, I think the irony of 
this, and someone else pointed this out to me, that we currently have 
some 20,000 or 30,000 troops patrolling the streets of Bosnia to make 
the streets safe over there. But I daresay it is not safe to walk the 
streets here in Washington, DC or in many of the cities in this 
country.
  Frankly, if we are willing to commit troops to make the streets safe 
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we should be willing to do whatever it takes to 
make the streets of the United States safe.

  Mr. KINGSTON. That is one reason we passed the truth-in-sentencing 
laws, as the gentleman knows, because as of a few years ago, the 
average criminal was only serving 35 percent of his sentence. And we 
are now saying if States want new Federal money to construct jails in 
their State for violent criminals, then they have to serve their full 
sentence, which makes the streets safe.
  We are arresting people not for the 2d time or the 3d time, but for 
the 9th, 10th and 11th time. It is not safe even if you are a police 
officer.
  We only have a few minutes so why do we not have some closing 
comments. Mr. Hayworth.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my colleague from Georgia and I thank my 
colleague from Minnesota for joining us this evening and, indeed, Mr. 
Speaker, those across our great Nation who are looking in this evening.
  We are confronted by profound problems. The test for us is not 
posturing for an election in November but moving to solve these 
problems. So once again, despite the challenges of some deliberate 
disinformation, we call on our colleagues from the liberal persuasion 
and the President of the United States at the other end of Pennsylvania 
Avenue to join with us to save Medicare, to adequately address these 
problems, to deal with the crime issue, to deal with genuine welfare 
reform, and to do it because it is the right thing to do.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I would just 
say that this debate tonight, this discussion tonight, has been 
constructive, and it reinforces what I really believe, and that is the 
fundamental debate that is going on here in this Congress and in this 
country is really between those who believe in more Washington control 
and more Washington responsibility. Whether we are talking about 
welfare or crime, or whether we are talking about Medicare, I do not 
care what it is, the issue is whether we will have more control and 
more responsibility in Washington or are we going to reinforce more 
personal control and more personal responsibility.
  Those are the policies we ought to pursue. That is what the American 
people expect, that is what they want, and that is what this Congress 
is trying to deliver.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Gutknecht, Mr. Hayworth, I agree with you 
completely. It has been 60 years since there has been a status quo 
shakeup in Washington, and we need to change this liberal command and 
control bureaucracy and return power back to the people, back to the 
local governments so that we can do a more efficient, more effective 
job of running this country and have a Government that works.
  Mr. Speaker, we yield back the balance of our time, and again I thank 
Mr. Gutknecht and Mr. Hayworth for joining in this special order.

                          ____________________